NAKHON RATCHASIMA ZOO (KORAT ZOO)
This was a long zoo day. I decided, stupidly, to visit the Korat Zoo as a day-trip from Bangkok. Mostly this was because I couldn't be bothered taking my stuff with me, finding a hotel, etc etc, just to visit the zoo. The reason it was not the most clever idea is because Nakhon Ratchasima is over four hours by bus from Bangkok, and then you also have to factor in the time spent getting from your accommodation to the bus station, and then at the other end from the bus station to the zoo (which, it turns out, is about 20km from the centre of the city). So I left my Bangkok guesthouse at 6.30am and didn't arrive at the zoo gate until 2pm. Coming back, I left the zoo at 5pm and arrived back at my guesthouse at 11.30pm.
My advice for visiting the Korat Zoo. Don't do it as a day-trip from Bangkok!
The following review won't be the greatest and it won't be that in-depth. The zoo itself is huge (215 acres) and really good overall, but I was so rushed for time that - even having rented a bicycle to get between enclosures faster - I still only just made it round everything. I barely took any photos because of this (and also it was raining most of the time). The visit was thus a bit frustrating through my own fault but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. If I'd had just one more hour there I think I would have been better satisfied.
Most buses from Bangkok to Nakhon Ratchasima depart from the northern bus terminal (Mo Chit) but there is one company which runs from the southern terminal (Sai Tai Mai). The latter terminal is easier to get to by public transport from where I was staying - you just catch city-bus number 127 or 516 from Wat Bowon Niwet (near Khao San Road). The morning traffic didn't make the journey very quick, so I didn't get to Sai Tai Mai until just on 8am. I knew there was a bus leaving at 8am, which I thought I would miss, but I got there in time. There are so few people catching the bus from this terminal that I think they wait a little bit longer just in case someone extra turns up, like me.
It takes around four hours for the trip, so I arrived at Nakhon Ratchasima at about 12.20pm. There are two stations in the city: the old one is called Number One and the new one (where I arrived) is called Number Two. From the bus station I caught the #17 songthaew (a truck-taxi) back up the road to The Mall for 8 Baht, and then from there caught the #4129 songthaew which goes all the way to the zoo gate (about forty minutes ride from The Mall, for 20 Baht). From the zoo gate it is then about 300 metres walk to the ticket entrance (150 Baht for a foreigner), and then another 700 metres to the car park where the actual entrance is. When I left the zoo just before closing time (5pm) the songthaew was waiting at the car park, saving me the walk back to the main road. I think this is probably standard at this time, but at any other time of day you'd need to go to the main road to catch it.
By the time I had walked from the main road to the car park, and then organised a bicycle it was already 2.30pm so I only had two and a half hours to get round everything. The zoo rents the bicycles out for 20 to 50 Baht per hour, and also has golf carts for 300 Baht per hour. There is also a tram-shuttle for 20 Baht but that's really only of practical use for viewing the paddocks of hooved stock.
The exhibition area of the zoo is roughly divided in half. The right hand part is mainly hooved stock and the larger carnivores, as well as a strange dinosaur island. The left side is a real mix, but generally the exhibits are arranged in broad groupings, so all the reptiles are together, the birds are mostly together, the primates are mostly in three groupings (apes, macaques, and South American), and there are also some hooved stock paddocks.
There are hog deer free-roaming everywhere throughout the zoo, as well as lesser numbers of common muntjac and I saw a few Eld's deer and sambar too. I also saw an adult common iguana at one point. I'm not sure if the hog deer and muntjac are genuine wild ones which have settled in the zoo of their own accord, or if they are descended from released animals. In any case, all the hog deer in Thailand are of Burmese origin (the last wild record was from the 1960s apparently, and the ones now wild in Thailand are the result of reintroduction efforts).
There were quite a few paths or enclosures blocked off for various reasons, so I definitely missed some areas. I also, sadly, could not find the Nocturnal House! It wasn't on the map at all (unless it is where there is a picture of an owl), but it was on several directional signposts. I went back and forth several times where it probably should have been but couldn't see it anywhere. If it exists there would be bound to be a number of interesting species inside. However I suspect that it was where there is now something called the "Korat Light Zoo" (which was closed, but from looking on the internet is a spectacle rather than for animals). The Children Zoo was also closed, and I think that is where there are kept albino muntjacs, meerkats and crested porcupines amongst others.
I went left from the bicycle rental, because there was a sign pointing in that direction to the Nocturnal House. The first enclosures I encountered were for the fur seals and penguins but they were now abandoned. Just nearby was a huge blue building which, judging from the signage and pictures on the outside walls, was their new enclosures. It mainly looked like a show arena, but I didn't bother entering because I knew I had a lot of zoo to get around in little time, and I've seen seals and penguins plenty of times before.
Then I came to the reptile area, which just kept on going. First were outdoor enclosures mainly for tortoises (and a row of pretty bad cylindrical cages for white-handed gibbons and langurs - probably the only really "bad" enclosures at the zoo apart for the macaques which I'll come to later), then an extensive indoors area for more chelonians, then a winding corridor in a house for snakes and a few lizards, and then even more outdoor enclosures for snakes, monitors, and Siamese crocodiles. I was pretty impressed with their reptile collection. The only thing that let it down was at the end of the snake house there was a group of very small tanks set in the wall. Many of the snakes in these were small pit-vipers but they still didn't have much room, and some of the other snakes (e.g. a corn snake, some water snakes, and some cobras) were several times longer than the tanks they were crammed into. Even the Mexican blonde tarantula in one of these tanks looked too big for its home. I ended up spending about forty minutes working my way through the reptile house, which took up quite a bit of the time I had. There is a species list at the end of the review.
Continuing on I found the chimpanzee and gibbon islands which made me feel better than the gibbon and langur cages in the reptile section. I mean, those previous cages weren't absolutely awful, but they were fairly small and also just vertical which meant that the gibbons had no brachiating room. The chimp island in particular was very good indeed. It appeared to be several islands, all heavily planted, connected with rope bridges. The chimps were staying out of the rain, but I could just see at least one in the distance. The gibbon islands - for many pairs of white-handed, northern white-cheeked, and pileated gibbons - were much smaller than the chimp islands, but all were planted and had dead trees and ropes as well, and had horizontal brachiating space for the occupants. There were also a number of Eld's deer roaming between the islands through the water (these must have been free-ranging because there was no barrier otherwise).
After a couple of paddocks for banteng, and mixed fallow deer and nilgai, there was a cluster of okay-sized but kind-of-ugly mammal cages for ring-tailed and brown lemurs (mixed), fennec foxes, black giant squirrel (cage too small but not tiny), and binturong. Nearby was the South American animals, comprised of paca, kinkajou, squirrel monkeys, and several species of marmosets and tamarins. Black-pencilled marmoset was a new one for me, and I think I've only seen red-handed tamarins once or twice before. The cages here were very ugly, dark, and quite small, but there were wire tunnels running everywhere overhead giving all the species (except the paca obviously) much more room. Most of the tunnels converged on a large covered building which seemed to be a sort of secondary Children Zoo. It was closed but I could see that there were large cages inside with at least squirrel monkeys moving around in there.
Most of the birds were housed in this general area as well. Opposite the mammal cages were the flamingo pens - three species separated from one another, but only a small-ish number of each (maybe ten to twenty). The pens were planted and not bad, but with nowhere suitable for nesting that I could see. Glass-fronted aviaries for parrots followed, and then there were also some aviaries for waterbirds (sarus cranes, storks and ibis, including a large colony of milky storks). A collection of very large (especially in height) aviaries housed the zoo's hornbills as well as several pairs of red-headed vultures of which the zoo has a breeding programme, for releases to the wild.
Somewhat randomly, "Cat Country" - a house of indoor enclosures for small carnivores - was right next to the birds and well away from all the larger carnivores in the second half of the zoo. The enclosures in here were, I guess, average in size but definitely veering towards the small side of average. They were glass-fronted and I think wire-roofed, and although the floors were concrete there were logs and rocks and some had planted areas as well. They weren't great but they weren't terrible either. The lighting wasn't the best, so I didn't bother with any photos. The species were mostly pretty standard for Asian zoos - golden cat, fishing cat, jungle cat (not so common), leopard cat, small Indian civet, large Indian civet, large-spotted civet (these two not so common either), masked palm civet, common palm civet, and crab-eating mongoose. The last species is definitely not a common species in Asian zoos, and in fact these are (I think) the first ones I've ever seen in a zoo. This house is probably where the marbled cats would have been kept previously.
I made a little side-detour here before heading onto the main hooved stock area, in order to see the "primates" of a directional sign, which turned out to be the macaque cages. I don't know exactly why macaques always get short-changed in zoos but they do, and here was no different. Five species of macaques in small unpleasant cages. Quite tall cages, but still small and with little for the monkeys to do. The fronts were glass and the walls brick or concrete, so not even much for them to climb on (although there were branches and logs, and the top of the cages were mesh). What was really interesting here were the crab-eating macaques, labelled as being Nicobar crab-eating macaques. There were two cages for them, but apart for the name the signage was generalised for crab-eating macaques. The animals themselves were a bright golden colour which I have never seen before. However looking on the internet just now, the Nicobar subspecies is actually very dark blackish and hence has the name umbrosa. I don't know where Korat's ones came from, but I have never come across any with a colour that bright before.
There's not much to say about the hooved stock at the zoo. There is a fairly big collection, with a wide range of deer and antelope, as well as giraffes, zebras, common and pigmy hippos, African elephants, and white rhinos. The paddocks are great - mostly long and winding and well-treed, rather than just big empty squares. Many of them are mixed-species paddocks. There are also ostriches and (unseen by me) rheas, emus, cassowaries, and red kangaroos. (The path to the ratites was blocked off, and the kangaroos simply weren't out).
At the top of the hooved stock section of the zoo are the big carnivores, all in moated, reasonably-sized, well-planted enclosures. Even the bear enclosures were well-planted which was great to see. In most zoos they are stuck on bare concrete. The path past the bear enclosures was actually blocked by netting, presumably because the bears had cubs - I saw a very young Asiatic black bear playing amongst the plants. The other carnivores here were spotted hyaenas, white and normal lions, white and Indochinese and Siberian tigers, and a pair of either leopards or jaguars. I just got a quick look at them as they ran into their shelter, and while their signage was specifically for jaguars they looked like leopards and photos I've seen from the zoo are of leopards.
The last part of the zoo I visited was the International Crane Foundation (I may have got the name wrong, but something like that). This is a large complex with raised walkways between aviaries for wading birds. The entry building has information, with the king of Thailand being prominently featured, but I didn't have time to look at any of it - the loudspeakers were announcing the imminent closure of the zoo for the day. I rushed round the aviaries. The zoo is part of an important breeding programme for eastern sarus cranes, and there are numerous pairs dotted around the zoo. Here, as well as a couple of pairs, there was also a large group of juveniles. Other species in the aviaries were black and grey crowned cranes, blue and demoiselle cranes (for the latter two the pens were blocked with tarpaulins), another large flock of milky storks, Asiatic black-headed ibis, and (excitingly) a group of white-shouldered ibis which were another new one for me.
Leaving the cranes, I cycled quickly up and down one of the roads looking futilely for the elusive Nocturnal House, and then headed to the exit having seen as good as everything. Just in time.
The Korat Zoo is undoubtably amongst the best in Asia. It has a huge site, and most of the enclosures are good with a very few exceptions (the macaques in particular), although I guess many of the actual cages are of "Asian style" and hence may not look great even if they are not bad for the inhabitants. The animals are all obviously well cared for. The zoo does a lot of conservation work with native Thai species, including breeding programmes for reintroductions to the wild. I don't think the city of Nakhon Ratchasima is the sort of place your average tourist would generally find themselves, but for any Zoochatter in Thailand it would definitely be a must-visit in order to go to this zoo. There is a good mix of ABC species and less-common Asian species too.
On a personal note, these were the "new" species for me at the zoo: white-shouldered ibis, red-headed vulture, black-pencilled marmoset. The crab-eating mongooses were the first I'd seen in a zoo but I've seen one in the wild before, so they're not completely "new" for me. If the crab-eating macaques actually are the Nicobar subspecies then they would be new too.
This was a long zoo day. I decided, stupidly, to visit the Korat Zoo as a day-trip from Bangkok. Mostly this was because I couldn't be bothered taking my stuff with me, finding a hotel, etc etc, just to visit the zoo. The reason it was not the most clever idea is because Nakhon Ratchasima is over four hours by bus from Bangkok, and then you also have to factor in the time spent getting from your accommodation to the bus station, and then at the other end from the bus station to the zoo (which, it turns out, is about 20km from the centre of the city). So I left my Bangkok guesthouse at 6.30am and didn't arrive at the zoo gate until 2pm. Coming back, I left the zoo at 5pm and arrived back at my guesthouse at 11.30pm.
My advice for visiting the Korat Zoo. Don't do it as a day-trip from Bangkok!
The following review won't be the greatest and it won't be that in-depth. The zoo itself is huge (215 acres) and really good overall, but I was so rushed for time that - even having rented a bicycle to get between enclosures faster - I still only just made it round everything. I barely took any photos because of this (and also it was raining most of the time). The visit was thus a bit frustrating through my own fault but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. If I'd had just one more hour there I think I would have been better satisfied.
Most buses from Bangkok to Nakhon Ratchasima depart from the northern bus terminal (Mo Chit) but there is one company which runs from the southern terminal (Sai Tai Mai). The latter terminal is easier to get to by public transport from where I was staying - you just catch city-bus number 127 or 516 from Wat Bowon Niwet (near Khao San Road). The morning traffic didn't make the journey very quick, so I didn't get to Sai Tai Mai until just on 8am. I knew there was a bus leaving at 8am, which I thought I would miss, but I got there in time. There are so few people catching the bus from this terminal that I think they wait a little bit longer just in case someone extra turns up, like me.
It takes around four hours for the trip, so I arrived at Nakhon Ratchasima at about 12.20pm. There are two stations in the city: the old one is called Number One and the new one (where I arrived) is called Number Two. From the bus station I caught the #17 songthaew (a truck-taxi) back up the road to The Mall for 8 Baht, and then from there caught the #4129 songthaew which goes all the way to the zoo gate (about forty minutes ride from The Mall, for 20 Baht). From the zoo gate it is then about 300 metres walk to the ticket entrance (150 Baht for a foreigner), and then another 700 metres to the car park where the actual entrance is. When I left the zoo just before closing time (5pm) the songthaew was waiting at the car park, saving me the walk back to the main road. I think this is probably standard at this time, but at any other time of day you'd need to go to the main road to catch it.
By the time I had walked from the main road to the car park, and then organised a bicycle it was already 2.30pm so I only had two and a half hours to get round everything. The zoo rents the bicycles out for 20 to 50 Baht per hour, and also has golf carts for 300 Baht per hour. There is also a tram-shuttle for 20 Baht but that's really only of practical use for viewing the paddocks of hooved stock.
The exhibition area of the zoo is roughly divided in half. The right hand part is mainly hooved stock and the larger carnivores, as well as a strange dinosaur island. The left side is a real mix, but generally the exhibits are arranged in broad groupings, so all the reptiles are together, the birds are mostly together, the primates are mostly in three groupings (apes, macaques, and South American), and there are also some hooved stock paddocks.
There are hog deer free-roaming everywhere throughout the zoo, as well as lesser numbers of common muntjac and I saw a few Eld's deer and sambar too. I also saw an adult common iguana at one point. I'm not sure if the hog deer and muntjac are genuine wild ones which have settled in the zoo of their own accord, or if they are descended from released animals. In any case, all the hog deer in Thailand are of Burmese origin (the last wild record was from the 1960s apparently, and the ones now wild in Thailand are the result of reintroduction efforts).
There were quite a few paths or enclosures blocked off for various reasons, so I definitely missed some areas. I also, sadly, could not find the Nocturnal House! It wasn't on the map at all (unless it is where there is a picture of an owl), but it was on several directional signposts. I went back and forth several times where it probably should have been but couldn't see it anywhere. If it exists there would be bound to be a number of interesting species inside. However I suspect that it was where there is now something called the "Korat Light Zoo" (which was closed, but from looking on the internet is a spectacle rather than for animals). The Children Zoo was also closed, and I think that is where there are kept albino muntjacs, meerkats and crested porcupines amongst others.
I went left from the bicycle rental, because there was a sign pointing in that direction to the Nocturnal House. The first enclosures I encountered were for the fur seals and penguins but they were now abandoned. Just nearby was a huge blue building which, judging from the signage and pictures on the outside walls, was their new enclosures. It mainly looked like a show arena, but I didn't bother entering because I knew I had a lot of zoo to get around in little time, and I've seen seals and penguins plenty of times before.
Then I came to the reptile area, which just kept on going. First were outdoor enclosures mainly for tortoises (and a row of pretty bad cylindrical cages for white-handed gibbons and langurs - probably the only really "bad" enclosures at the zoo apart for the macaques which I'll come to later), then an extensive indoors area for more chelonians, then a winding corridor in a house for snakes and a few lizards, and then even more outdoor enclosures for snakes, monitors, and Siamese crocodiles. I was pretty impressed with their reptile collection. The only thing that let it down was at the end of the snake house there was a group of very small tanks set in the wall. Many of the snakes in these were small pit-vipers but they still didn't have much room, and some of the other snakes (e.g. a corn snake, some water snakes, and some cobras) were several times longer than the tanks they were crammed into. Even the Mexican blonde tarantula in one of these tanks looked too big for its home. I ended up spending about forty minutes working my way through the reptile house, which took up quite a bit of the time I had. There is a species list at the end of the review.
Continuing on I found the chimpanzee and gibbon islands which made me feel better than the gibbon and langur cages in the reptile section. I mean, those previous cages weren't absolutely awful, but they were fairly small and also just vertical which meant that the gibbons had no brachiating room. The chimp island in particular was very good indeed. It appeared to be several islands, all heavily planted, connected with rope bridges. The chimps were staying out of the rain, but I could just see at least one in the distance. The gibbon islands - for many pairs of white-handed, northern white-cheeked, and pileated gibbons - were much smaller than the chimp islands, but all were planted and had dead trees and ropes as well, and had horizontal brachiating space for the occupants. There were also a number of Eld's deer roaming between the islands through the water (these must have been free-ranging because there was no barrier otherwise).
After a couple of paddocks for banteng, and mixed fallow deer and nilgai, there was a cluster of okay-sized but kind-of-ugly mammal cages for ring-tailed and brown lemurs (mixed), fennec foxes, black giant squirrel (cage too small but not tiny), and binturong. Nearby was the South American animals, comprised of paca, kinkajou, squirrel monkeys, and several species of marmosets and tamarins. Black-pencilled marmoset was a new one for me, and I think I've only seen red-handed tamarins once or twice before. The cages here were very ugly, dark, and quite small, but there were wire tunnels running everywhere overhead giving all the species (except the paca obviously) much more room. Most of the tunnels converged on a large covered building which seemed to be a sort of secondary Children Zoo. It was closed but I could see that there were large cages inside with at least squirrel monkeys moving around in there.
Most of the birds were housed in this general area as well. Opposite the mammal cages were the flamingo pens - three species separated from one another, but only a small-ish number of each (maybe ten to twenty). The pens were planted and not bad, but with nowhere suitable for nesting that I could see. Glass-fronted aviaries for parrots followed, and then there were also some aviaries for waterbirds (sarus cranes, storks and ibis, including a large colony of milky storks). A collection of very large (especially in height) aviaries housed the zoo's hornbills as well as several pairs of red-headed vultures of which the zoo has a breeding programme, for releases to the wild.
Somewhat randomly, "Cat Country" - a house of indoor enclosures for small carnivores - was right next to the birds and well away from all the larger carnivores in the second half of the zoo. The enclosures in here were, I guess, average in size but definitely veering towards the small side of average. They were glass-fronted and I think wire-roofed, and although the floors were concrete there were logs and rocks and some had planted areas as well. They weren't great but they weren't terrible either. The lighting wasn't the best, so I didn't bother with any photos. The species were mostly pretty standard for Asian zoos - golden cat, fishing cat, jungle cat (not so common), leopard cat, small Indian civet, large Indian civet, large-spotted civet (these two not so common either), masked palm civet, common palm civet, and crab-eating mongoose. The last species is definitely not a common species in Asian zoos, and in fact these are (I think) the first ones I've ever seen in a zoo. This house is probably where the marbled cats would have been kept previously.
I made a little side-detour here before heading onto the main hooved stock area, in order to see the "primates" of a directional sign, which turned out to be the macaque cages. I don't know exactly why macaques always get short-changed in zoos but they do, and here was no different. Five species of macaques in small unpleasant cages. Quite tall cages, but still small and with little for the monkeys to do. The fronts were glass and the walls brick or concrete, so not even much for them to climb on (although there were branches and logs, and the top of the cages were mesh). What was really interesting here were the crab-eating macaques, labelled as being Nicobar crab-eating macaques. There were two cages for them, but apart for the name the signage was generalised for crab-eating macaques. The animals themselves were a bright golden colour which I have never seen before. However looking on the internet just now, the Nicobar subspecies is actually very dark blackish and hence has the name umbrosa. I don't know where Korat's ones came from, but I have never come across any with a colour that bright before.
There's not much to say about the hooved stock at the zoo. There is a fairly big collection, with a wide range of deer and antelope, as well as giraffes, zebras, common and pigmy hippos, African elephants, and white rhinos. The paddocks are great - mostly long and winding and well-treed, rather than just big empty squares. Many of them are mixed-species paddocks. There are also ostriches and (unseen by me) rheas, emus, cassowaries, and red kangaroos. (The path to the ratites was blocked off, and the kangaroos simply weren't out).
At the top of the hooved stock section of the zoo are the big carnivores, all in moated, reasonably-sized, well-planted enclosures. Even the bear enclosures were well-planted which was great to see. In most zoos they are stuck on bare concrete. The path past the bear enclosures was actually blocked by netting, presumably because the bears had cubs - I saw a very young Asiatic black bear playing amongst the plants. The other carnivores here were spotted hyaenas, white and normal lions, white and Indochinese and Siberian tigers, and a pair of either leopards or jaguars. I just got a quick look at them as they ran into their shelter, and while their signage was specifically for jaguars they looked like leopards and photos I've seen from the zoo are of leopards.
The last part of the zoo I visited was the International Crane Foundation (I may have got the name wrong, but something like that). This is a large complex with raised walkways between aviaries for wading birds. The entry building has information, with the king of Thailand being prominently featured, but I didn't have time to look at any of it - the loudspeakers were announcing the imminent closure of the zoo for the day. I rushed round the aviaries. The zoo is part of an important breeding programme for eastern sarus cranes, and there are numerous pairs dotted around the zoo. Here, as well as a couple of pairs, there was also a large group of juveniles. Other species in the aviaries were black and grey crowned cranes, blue and demoiselle cranes (for the latter two the pens were blocked with tarpaulins), another large flock of milky storks, Asiatic black-headed ibis, and (excitingly) a group of white-shouldered ibis which were another new one for me.
Leaving the cranes, I cycled quickly up and down one of the roads looking futilely for the elusive Nocturnal House, and then headed to the exit having seen as good as everything. Just in time.
The Korat Zoo is undoubtably amongst the best in Asia. It has a huge site, and most of the enclosures are good with a very few exceptions (the macaques in particular), although I guess many of the actual cages are of "Asian style" and hence may not look great even if they are not bad for the inhabitants. The animals are all obviously well cared for. The zoo does a lot of conservation work with native Thai species, including breeding programmes for reintroductions to the wild. I don't think the city of Nakhon Ratchasima is the sort of place your average tourist would generally find themselves, but for any Zoochatter in Thailand it would definitely be a must-visit in order to go to this zoo. There is a good mix of ABC species and less-common Asian species too.
On a personal note, these were the "new" species for me at the zoo: white-shouldered ibis, red-headed vulture, black-pencilled marmoset. The crab-eating mongooses were the first I'd seen in a zoo but I've seen one in the wild before, so they're not completely "new" for me. If the crab-eating macaques actually are the Nicobar subspecies then they would be new too.
